Manual of the apiary

by Albert John Cook

It will pay well for the apiarist to decorate his grounds with soft and silver maples, for their beauty and early bloom. If his soil is rich, sugar maples and lindens may well serve a similar purpose. The Judas tree, too, and tulip trees, both North and South, may well be made to ornament the apiarist's home. For vines, obtain the wistarias.

Sow and encourage the sowing of Alsike clover and silver-leaf buckwheat in your neighborhood. Be sure that your wife, children and bees, can often repair to a large bed of the new giant or grandiflora mignonette, and remember that it, with cleome and borage, blooms till frost. Study the bee plants of your region, and then study the above table, and provide for a succession, remembering that the mustards, rape and buckwheat may be made to bloom almost at pleasure, by sowing at the proper time. Don't forget that borage and the mustards seem comparatively indifferent to wet weather. Be sure that all waste places are stocked with motherwort, catnip, asters, etc. (See[ Appendix, page 289]).

The above dates are only true for the most part in Michigan and Northern Ohio, and for more Southern latitudes must be varied, which by comparison of a few, as the fruit trees, becomes no difficult matter.

CHAPTER XVII.
WINTERING BEES.

This is a subject, of course, of paramount importance to the apiarist, as this is the rock on which some of even the most successful have recently split. Yet I come fearlessly to consider this question, as from all the multitude of disasters I see no occasion for discouragement. If the problem of successful wintering has not been solved already, it surely will be, and that speedily. So important an interest was never yet vanquished by misfortune, and there is no reason to think that history is now going to be reversed. Even the worst aspect of the case—in favor of which I think, though in opposition to such excellent apiarists as Marvin, Heddon, etc., that there is no proof, and but few suggestions even—that these calamities are the effects of an epidemic, would be all powerless to dishearten men trained to reason from effect to cause. Even an epidemic—which would by no means skip by the largest, finest apiaries, owned and controlled by the wisest, most careful, and most thoughtful, as has been the case in the late "winters of our discontent," nor only choose winters of excessive cold, or following great drouth and absence of honey secretion in which to work its havoc—would surely yield to man's invention.

THE CAUSE OF DISASTROUS WINTERING.

Epidemic, then, being set aside as no factor in the solution, to what shall we ascribe such wide-spread disasters? I fully believe, and to no branch of this subject have I given more thought, study, and observation, that all the losses may be traced either to unwholesome food, failure in late breeding of the previous year, extremes of temperature, or to protracted cold with excessive dampness. I know from actual and wide-spread observation, that the severe loss of 1870 and 1871 was attended in this part of Michigan with unsuitable honey in the hive. The previous autumn was unprecedentedly dry. Flowers were rare, and storing was largely from insect secretion, and consequently the stores were unwholesome. I tasted of honey from many hives only to find it most nauseating. I fully believe that had the honey been thoroughly extracted the previous autumn, and the bees fed good honey or sugar, no loss would have been experienced. At least it is significant that all who did so, escaped, even where their neighbors all failed. Nor less so the fact that when I discovered eight of my twelve colonies dead, and four more just alive, I cleaned the remaining ones all out, and to one no worse nor better than the others I gave good capped honey stored early the previous summer, while the others were left with their old stores, that one lived and gave the best record I have ever known, the succeeding season, while all the others died.

Again, suppose that after the basswood season in July, there is no storing of honey, either from want of space, or from lack of bloom. In this case brood-rearing ceases. Yet if the weather is dry and warm, as of course it will be in August and September, the bees continue to wander about, death comes apace, and by autumn the bees are reduced in numbers, old in days, and illy prepared to brave the winter and perform the duties of spring. I fully believe that if all the colonies of our State and country had been kept breeding by proper use of the extractor, and feeding, even till into October, we should have had a different record, especially as to spring dwindling, and consequent death. In the autumn of 1872 I kept my bees breeding till the first of October. The following winter I had no loss, while my neighbors lost all of their bees.

Extremes of heat and cold are also detrimental to the bees. If the temperature of the hive becomes too high the bees become restless, fat more than they ought, and if confined to their hives are distended with their fœces, become diseased, besmear their comb and hives, and die. If when they become thus disturbed, they could have a purifying flight, all would be well.

Again, if the temperature becomes extremely low, the bees to keep up the animal heat must take more food; they are uneasy, exhale much moisture, which may settle and freeze on the outer combs about the cluster, preventing the bees from getting the needed food, and thus in this case both dysentery and starvation confront the bees. That able and far-seeing apiarist the lamented M. Quinby, was one of the first to discover this fact; and here as elsewhere gave advice that if heeded, would have saved great loss and sore disappointment.